This school year, over half of the Kuspuk School District’s entire teaching staff is from the Philippines. And nearly all of them are new to the U.S.
Rovan Agad teaches math and coaches junior varsity basketball at the Aniak high school. He’s happy to be here, finally connecting with his students in person. He arrived from the Philippines in October 2021.
Agad was supposed to have started at the school a couple of months earlier, but a minor injury delayed his trip. He had to wait for a cut on his finger to heal before he could give his fingerprints to get a visa. So for the first two months of classes, Agad taught over Zoom from 1 a.m. to 7 a.m. Philippine time.
“It was hard to establish the connection, especially when you’re on screen,” Agad said.
But now that Agad’s here in person, the students are attentive, and even more so when Agad uses American slang.
“So that’s why I-squared is equal to negative one. Gucci?” Agad asked his class during a lesson.
“Gucci,” the class agreed.
Agad applied for teaching jobs in Alaska because he had been let go by his former school when it shut down during the pandemic. Agad isn’t the only teacher from the Philippines in Aniak this year. There are four, and they’re all roommates.
The Lower Kuskokwim School District also hired teachers from the Philippines this school year, though a smaller share of its new teachers are Filipino. Out of 82 new teachers the school district hired this year, 10 are from the Philippines.
At the Kuspuk School District, 19 of the 21 new teachers are from the Philippines, and 20 out of 39 of the district’s total teachers are from the Philippines.
Both school districts used the Alaska Teacher Placement Agency to hire teachers last year. A spokesperson for the agency said that it does not advertise in the Philippines, but accepts applications from all over the world. The spokesperson said that she saw an increase in the number of Filipino applicants compared to the year prior.
Kuspuk School District Superintendent James Anderson said that he didn’t necessarily look for applicants from the Philippines. Anderson said that he simply hired the best and most experienced teachers. It just so happened that nearly all of them were from the southern Philippines and speak a Bisayan language as their native language.
The Filipino teachers in Aniak all mentioned one reason to come to Alaska.
“It’s kind of a very shallow reason, but because of the snow. We don’t have snow there!” Jay Mojello said.
Mojello is a second-grade teacher. He said, like the other teachers, had a more serious reason for coming to the U.S. — the salary, which the Aniak teachers say is about 10 times higher than in the Philippines. Mojello needed to pay off his debt and send money back to his family.
So did Kaycee Limod, a sixth-grade teacher. But for her, it was an extra difficult decision to come to the U.S. She had to leave her husband and young baby at home.
“He’s already two. I just, I just miss him,” Limod said. “I asked him, if you can, please give me this opportunity. Be with our son, and then I’ll get you.”
Limod said that either she’ll join her family back in the Philippines or she’ll bring them to Alaska. She said she’s enjoying learning a new culture and gaining professional experience. That experience, Limod and the other teachers said, has come with growing pains.
“Every time I give them instruction, they don’t listen to me. And the first week, first, second week there I was here, I was really crying. Every time I go home, I always cry because I feel like I’m not an effective teacher,” Limod said.
But she said now, about halfway through the school year, she and the students have found a good rhythm.
There’s a good rhythm at home too. The four Filipino teachers share a four-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment across town. They said that it helps them save on costs.
The teachers haven’t decided yet whether they’ll stay in Aniak for another school year. They say that overall they like Aniak, but they dislike the nearly hour-long walk to school on cold, dark winter mornings, and the lack of emergency medical care available in the community.
But if they leave, they said they would miss their students and the camaraderie.
On Fridays, the four colleagues hang out and watch movies.
Each day, the men cook and the women do the dishes. Mojello makes breakfast and Agad makes dinner. He’s been blending Alaskan and Filipino flavors in the kitchen. They say that the community has been generous with gifting them subsistence foods.
“We had moose adobo. We got moose tapa. We also had salmon,” Agad said.
The teachers have until Mar. 4 to let the school know if they’ll be returning for the 2022-2023 school year.
